


I miss you like the flowers miss springtime

by meridian_rose (meridianrose)



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: 100fandoms at DW, Community: 100_tales, Community: 100fandoms, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, past Jack Porter/Emily Thorne, the prompt(s) were 'spring' and I may have beaten the metaphor to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 18:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20068240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/pseuds/meridian_rose
Summary: Post-canon. Nolan misses the fiery warmth of Emily's presence but only when he's at death's door does she return.





	I miss you like the flowers miss springtime

**Author's Note:**

> For the 100 tales prompt 025 "spring" and the 100 fandoms prompt 035 "spring"

The Hamptons means summer. Many residents live in the city the rest of the year, only moving out to their beach houses during the hot summer months to show off their bathing suits and attend elegant parties under the stars.

Nolan lives here the whole year. He's celebrated Christmas sipping champagne as he watches the waves wash over the nearly empty sand. He sips cocoa on fall evenings as he works on his laptop, the call of gulls still echoing across the landscape.

Spring however is his favourite season. The idea of beginnings and growth appeals.

Emily arrived in summer. Her spring, her childhood, left behind her along with her identity as Amanda Clarke, she was now a stunning woman known as Emily Thorne. She had a penchant for red and she was as dangerous as the colour suggested, a fiery temperament masking a cold determination to seek vengeance.

When she'd married Jack and left the Hamptons, Nolan wished her well. But fall had come into his life; something was missing now and it was a little darker and cooler and diminished.

He'd tried to help people find justice. He'd paid for lawyers and hired private detectives and hacked into files and saved ten people. He'd saved them from wrongful imprisonment or from being denied custody of their children or secured them payouts from companies trying to wrongfully terminate their employment or ensured they got their fair share of inheritance. Each victory was important and meaningful to his clients and yet nothing soothed the ache in his soul, the throb of a missing piece.

His lowest point, the deepest depths of winter, came when he upset the wrong person. Alone in his office with a not so mild mannered newspaper reporter, Nolan didn't expect the gun. He lay on the floor, watching the beige carpet turn red with his blood, red as one of Emily's dresses, and wished he'd got the chance to see her again.

"If I knew you'd come so quickly I'd have got shot sooner," he murmured when he came to, surprised to be alive at all, so taken aback at Emily sitting at his bedside that he wondered if this were a heavenly hallucination.

Emily shook her head, eyes bright with tears. "If you wanted me to come you only had to call," she scolded. She held his hand in both of hers. "My God, Nolan. Is this what happens when I leave you alone for five minutes?"

Five years, he wanted to say, and it would be a lie. It had been fourteen months, though it felt like five years, or fifteen, or fifty.

"Then don't leave," he managed to say before he drifted off again. She squeezed his hand tightly and he took that to mean she wouldn't.

And she didn't.

Emily wouldn't tell him, not for weeks, where Jack was. Why he hadn't come back with her, why she wasn't calling to check on him.

"I'm fine, you know," Nolan said one night. They were sitting side by side by the pool, overlooking the ocean, drinks in one hand, fingers entwined with the other. It hurt to say the words but he knew he had to. "You got shot and nearly drowned and in half this time you were back to karate chopping your way around the Hamptons."

Emily scoffed. "You're not me," she said. "And I know you're fine."

"Then why are you still here?"

Emily was silent, refusing to meet his gaze. At last she said, "Don't you want me here?"

He tightened his grip on her fingers. "More than anything. But Jack-"

"He met someone else," she said. "We're separated, pending a divorce."

Nolan frowned. "But..." He couldn't form any more coherent words. Emily and Jack had been destined for each other or so it had seemed. Since they'd met as children, Amanda and Jack had been soulmates.

"She can give him children," Emily said tightly. "She's normal, with a normal job, a normal life. She has a child a year older than Carl and kept talking about having another. I saw the way Jack looked at her and I knew...I could keep him. He'd stay with me if I asked. But I knew he'd be happier with her."

"Ems. I'm sorry." Nolan lifted her hand, brushed his lips against her knuckles.

She closed her eyes, nodded. For a while there was no sound but the distant roar of the ocean.

"I understand," Nolan said. "Not what you've lost, but that feeling. I think, if I'd asked you stay, you might have. But it wouldn't have been right. You needed to go with Jack."

"I did," Emily said. She finished her drink. "But that's over now. I'm here, Nolan. Do you want to me stay?"

"More than anything," he said again.

"With you," she said and he nodded, knowing this was a point of no return. From hereon in, everything would be different. But hopefully better. "I'll go if you prefer. I'll stay as a friend if that's what you want. Or we can be together."

"Together," he said without hesitation. Some part of him would wonder, at least for a while, if this was enough, if he'd always be second choice compared to Jack. He could live with that. He couldn't live the life he wanted with her missing from his life.

Emily got to her feet. "I'll refill our glasses so we can make a toast," she said lightly.

Nolan watched her move gracefully to the nearby table to grab the brandy. He'd always thought the warm liquor was like the last summer fruits, best enjoyed as the bite of fall winds blew in. But tonight it tasted like spring.

Spring is his favourite season. With Emily sleeping peacefully alongside him that night it felt like a new beginning with endless opportunities.


End file.
